Gardening with Hand Clippers

Hand clippers will help you prune your garden. Learn about gardening with hand clippers from an award-winning horticulturist in this free home landscaping video. View Video Transcript

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eHow Home & Garden Editor

Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Stan De Freitas, Mr. Green Thumb, for On Gardening. One of the tools that I probably use the most in the yard and garden, and you will too, is your Hand Clippers. These of course, are going to be a good tool for cutting out dead material. If you've got Roses that need to be deadheaded back, or if you've got some dieback on your tomato plants, you need to make sure you get that bad material off. And you'll notice, these materials have a nice plastic-coated handle, so it's easy on your hand, and also make sure it's got a cutter that tends to pass each other, like an anvil. Some of them will have like a flat edge right here, and that means you're going to kind of smoosh the material when you cut them. It's not the best for the plant. If you use something like this, you're getting a nice scissor action, where it actually crosses each other like a pair of scissors, and you get a much sharper, better cut, and that's important when you get ready to start working with hand tools in the garden. If you've got any kind of dead material, dying material, you need to make sure you go back to where it's nice and green and alive. It's one of the important parts of gardening. Sometimes people cut back just to the edge, and if you do that, well you're not getting rid of that material that can continue to die back into the plant. Remember that the Hand Cutters are an important part of your tool arsenal in gardening. For On Gardening, I'm Stan De Freitas, Mr. Green Thumb.